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Pages above:
Catching whales for science is a hoax
Activists hold a banner with an question mark beside the Nisshin Maru 'Research' factory ship, demonstrating the fake nature of the whaling operation.
Enlarge Image
The whaling fleet took the same species of whale they had caught the year before and returned them to Japan boxed in 15 kg cardboard cartons, ready for sale. This was made possible by 'scientific' whaling.
When the last remaining high seas commercial whaling company in Japan was dissolved in 1987, it gave its factory ship and catchers to a new company whose shareholders were all companies formerly involved in whaling.
In the same year a non profit organisation called the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) was founded.
The new company that now owned the whaling fleet donated nine million US dollars to the ICR. The ICR promptly chartered the whaling fleet from the new company and set off for the Antarctic using the factory ship, catchers and crew from the commercial hunt to catch whales in the name of science.
When the program began with a two year 'feasibility study', it had two objectives: estimation of biological parameters to improve stock management and elucidation of the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem. ['Improve stock management' means to find ways to increase the annual catch of whales without increasing the risk of depleting the population.]
Their objective was to determine age specific mortality - like the actuarial tables for humans that can tell you the expected remaining lifespan of a 45 year old person. After a few years they realised that this was too difficult an objective and revised it to determining the natural mortality rate instead.
The first 'scientific' whaling program, called JARPA, spent 18 years and killed 6,778 minke whales attempting to determine the natural mortality rate, 'M'.
In 2006 an expert workshop of scientists from the International Whaling Commission, meeting in Tokyo, agreed (including the Japanese scientists) that the natural mortality rate was not determined - the confidence limits around estimates of M from JARPA data were so wide that M remains effectively unknown. These were so wide that even a value of M=0 was not excluded.
In other words, 18 years of lethal 'research' had been unable to exclude the possibility that minke whales might be immortal!
And although lots of data were collected in attempts to try and understand the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem the report of the workshop notes that "relatively little progress has been made in addressing this objective" and this objective remains unreached.
Two more objectives were added in 1995 and 1996 but they were not reached either. But despite the failure of this huge program to reach a single one of its objectives, the ICR has moved on to a second program, JARPAII, which will kill even more whales.
They did this before the workshop to review the first program had taken place. So what will be the role of lethal science in the new program and what could be done by non lethal methods instead?
According to the government of Japan, the new 'research' will be aimed at:
Monitoring whale abundance is easy in principle - you count the whales. But in practice it is harder than it seems.
When the 18 years of data from the first JARPA were analysed by the expert workshop, its conclusion was that the data were 'consistent with a substantial decline, a substantial increase, or approximate stability in minke whale abundance in these geographic areas over the period of JARPA.' In other words nothing had been learned.
Age at maturity requires killing the whale to examine growth rings in its earplugs (a bit like the growth rings in trees), but nothing has been learned from 18 years of this, it seems unlikely that anything will be learned, and in any case the answers this 'research' seeks to provide are not needed.
Pregnancy rates could, in theory, be monitored from biopsy samples but this would simply tell us what we already know - most mature female minkes are pregnant, something we already know from the past 'research'.
Monitoring prey consumption and the change in blubber thickness involve killing the whale and weighing its stomach contents. Data from the 8000 plus minkes killed so far in JARPA and JARPA II has determined that they eat krill and only krill.
Information about a whales diet can also be determined by collecting whale faeces for analysis.
Blubber thickness can tell us about the whale's condition; this can also be determined by firing a biopsy dart into the whale. Biopsy darts remove a bit of tissue but do not kill or injure the whale.
The objective of measuring the levels of contaminants in whales has been carefully designed to require killing the whale. Investigators will look at levels of heavy metals in internal organs such as kidney and liver and there is no way to get these without killing the whale.
But the contaminants that are likely to have most effect on the whales, the organochlorines, are fat soluble and so could be sampled by biopsy dart.
There is already a lot of information on heavy metals in whales from the past program and it is difficult to see what use there is in collecting more.
But if more were needed it could be obtained by taking samples from southern hemisphere whales killed by accident, particularly those hit by ships, and strandings, or by studying the thousands of samples already taken but not analysed.
Monitoring the cetacean habitat, by measuring changes in water temperature, salinity and ice is completely non lethal.
Just as humans group into tribes and nations, whales group into sub populations with different characteristics. For example one sub population of humpbacks will go to one area to give birth and mate, another sub population will go to a different area.
There are genetic differences between these sub populations and so population structure can most easily be determined from DNA analysis. DNA samples can be obtained by biopsy darts but the JARPA 'researchers' claim it is too difficult to biopsy whales in the Antarctic.
They also point out that killing the whale allows its meat to be sold on the market, thus defraying the cost of the 'research' whereas there is no financial return from a biopsy. If we wanted to resolve population structure it could be done entirely from DNA analysis without killing a single whale.
The objective of 'improving management' is the big lie in a program founded on lies because 'improved management' simply means bigger commercial quotas. The architects of JARPA II are clear about this.
They complain that the current rules of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which would govern commercial whaling if it were allowed to restart, are 'overly concerned with the protection of whale stocks' and it is a primary objective of JARPA II to find evidence that would allow those rules to be relaxed.
But the Southern Ocean was made a whale sanctuary by the IWC in 1994 with only Japan voting no. So Japan's 'researchers' are gathering data to facilitate increased commercial quotas in an area that is off limits to commercial whaling.
Although Japan exempted itself from the ban on commercial hunting of minkes within the sanctuary area it accepted that the sanctuary applies to fin and humpback whales.
Whale scientists all over the world study whales without killing or injuring them. The JARPA 'researchers' insist on using lethal methods not because they are necessary but because they supply whale meat to the markets in Japan and offer an opportunity to train new crew, thus keeping the whaling industry alive.
Non lethal methods have huge advantages over lethal ones because they permit repeated observations of the same individual. Lethal methods, by their nature, offer only a snapshot. Once a whale is 'observed' , it cannot be observed again later.
This makes lethal methods particularly unsuitable for the studies of whale behaviour, such as migration, which are of great interest to scientists.
When the last remaining high seas commercial whaling company in Japan was dissolved in 1987, it gave its factory ship and catchers to a new company whose shareholders were all companies formerly involved in whaling.
In the same year a non profit organisation called the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) was founded.
The new company that now owned the whaling fleet donated nine million US dollars to the ICR. The ICR promptly chartered the whaling fleet from the new company and set off for the Antarctic using the factory ship, catchers and crew from the commercial hunt to catch whales in the name of science.
So what about the science?
When the program began with a two year 'feasibility study', it had two objectives: estimation of biological parameters to improve stock management and elucidation of the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem. ['Improve stock management' means to find ways to increase the annual catch of whales without increasing the risk of depleting the population.]
Their objective was to determine age specific mortality - like the actuarial tables for humans that can tell you the expected remaining lifespan of a 45 year old person. After a few years they realised that this was too difficult an objective and revised it to determining the natural mortality rate instead.
The first 'scientific' whaling program, called JARPA, spent 18 years and killed 6,778 minke whales attempting to determine the natural mortality rate, 'M'.
In 2006 an expert workshop of scientists from the International Whaling Commission, meeting in Tokyo, agreed (including the Japanese scientists) that the natural mortality rate was not determined - the confidence limits around estimates of M from JARPA data were so wide that M remains effectively unknown. These were so wide that even a value of M=0 was not excluded.
In other words, 18 years of lethal 'research' had been unable to exclude the possibility that minke whales might be immortal!
And although lots of data were collected in attempts to try and understand the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem the report of the workshop notes that "relatively little progress has been made in addressing this objective" and this objective remains unreached.
Two more objectives were added in 1995 and 1996 but they were not reached either. But despite the failure of this huge program to reach a single one of its objectives, the ICR has moved on to a second program, JARPAII, which will kill even more whales.
They did this before the workshop to review the first program had taken place. So what will be the role of lethal science in the new program and what could be done by non lethal methods instead?
According to the government of Japan, the new 'research' will be aimed at:
- Monitoring whale abundance trends and biological parameters such as pregnancy rate and age at maturity.
- Monitoring prey consumption and the change in blubber thickness.
- Monitoring the effects of contaminants on cetaceans
- Monitoring cetacean habitat such as changes in water temperature, salinity and ice.
- Resolving population structure
- Improving management.
Monitoring whale abundance is easy in principle - you count the whales. But in practice it is harder than it seems.
When the 18 years of data from the first JARPA were analysed by the expert workshop, its conclusion was that the data were 'consistent with a substantial decline, a substantial increase, or approximate stability in minke whale abundance in these geographic areas over the period of JARPA.' In other words nothing had been learned.
Age at maturity requires killing the whale to examine growth rings in its earplugs (a bit like the growth rings in trees), but nothing has been learned from 18 years of this, it seems unlikely that anything will be learned, and in any case the answers this 'research' seeks to provide are not needed.
Pregnancy rates could, in theory, be monitored from biopsy samples but this would simply tell us what we already know - most mature female minkes are pregnant, something we already know from the past 'research'.
Monitoring prey consumption and the change in blubber thickness involve killing the whale and weighing its stomach contents. Data from the 8000 plus minkes killed so far in JARPA and JARPA II has determined that they eat krill and only krill.
Information about a whales diet can also be determined by collecting whale faeces for analysis.
Blubber thickness can tell us about the whale's condition; this can also be determined by firing a biopsy dart into the whale. Biopsy darts remove a bit of tissue but do not kill or injure the whale.
The objective of measuring the levels of contaminants in whales has been carefully designed to require killing the whale. Investigators will look at levels of heavy metals in internal organs such as kidney and liver and there is no way to get these without killing the whale.
But the contaminants that are likely to have most effect on the whales, the organochlorines, are fat soluble and so could be sampled by biopsy dart.
There is already a lot of information on heavy metals in whales from the past program and it is difficult to see what use there is in collecting more.
But if more were needed it could be obtained by taking samples from southern hemisphere whales killed by accident, particularly those hit by ships, and strandings, or by studying the thousands of samples already taken but not analysed.
Monitoring the cetacean habitat, by measuring changes in water temperature, salinity and ice is completely non lethal.
Just as humans group into tribes and nations, whales group into sub populations with different characteristics. For example one sub population of humpbacks will go to one area to give birth and mate, another sub population will go to a different area.
There are genetic differences between these sub populations and so population structure can most easily be determined from DNA analysis. DNA samples can be obtained by biopsy darts but the JARPA 'researchers' claim it is too difficult to biopsy whales in the Antarctic.
They also point out that killing the whale allows its meat to be sold on the market, thus defraying the cost of the 'research' whereas there is no financial return from a biopsy. If we wanted to resolve population structure it could be done entirely from DNA analysis without killing a single whale.
The objective of 'improving management' is the big lie in a program founded on lies because 'improved management' simply means bigger commercial quotas. The architects of JARPA II are clear about this.
They complain that the current rules of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which would govern commercial whaling if it were allowed to restart, are 'overly concerned with the protection of whale stocks' and it is a primary objective of JARPA II to find evidence that would allow those rules to be relaxed.
But the Southern Ocean was made a whale sanctuary by the IWC in 1994 with only Japan voting no. So Japan's 'researchers' are gathering data to facilitate increased commercial quotas in an area that is off limits to commercial whaling.
Although Japan exempted itself from the ban on commercial hunting of minkes within the sanctuary area it accepted that the sanctuary applies to fin and humpback whales.
Whale scientists all over the world study whales without killing or injuring them. The JARPA 'researchers' insist on using lethal methods not because they are necessary but because they supply whale meat to the markets in Japan and offer an opportunity to train new crew, thus keeping the whaling industry alive.
| ITEM | LETHAL | NON LETHAL |
| Body length | Take actual measurements | Take photos and measure photos |
| Body weight | Weigh body | Calculate from length |
| Age | Collect teeth, earplugs, baleen plates | Estimate from length and sex |
| Growth | Measure body length and determine age | Observe same whale over several years |
| Maturation | Examine reproductive glands | Observe same whale over several years |
| Fertilisation | Examine reproductive glands | No non lethal method but can observe when calf is born |
| Breeding season | Deduce from feotus | Observe on breeding grounds |
| Pregnancy | Feotus present | Biopsy hormone analysis |
| Lactation | Examine Mammary gland | Observe mother calf pairs |
| Breeding cycle | Determine from pregnancy rate and other data | Observe whales on breeding grounds |
| Diet | Examin stomach contents | Faeces collection biopsy |
| Tracking | Internal tags recovered when whale is killed | Photo ID satallite tags |
| Stock structure | Sample tissues from dead whales | Biopsy from live whales |
Non lethal methods have huge advantages over lethal ones because they permit repeated observations of the same individual. Lethal methods, by their nature, offer only a snapshot. Once a whale is 'observed' , it cannot be observed again later.
This makes lethal methods particularly unsuitable for the studies of whale behaviour, such as migration, which are of great interest to scientists.
